It’s hard to say. It’s tricky to spell. Few people have even heard of the word.

But it could be one of the most significant descriptors in any language, considering that the future of the globe may depend on how well people understand it, are willing to engage in discussion about it, and can critically think about their own role in issues raised by the concept.

Coined in the early 1980s, Anthropocene is a geologic designation that suggests for the first time that human beings—and not just natural forces—are shaping the earth’s ecosystem through business practices and lifestyles that contribute to everything from global warming to habitat destruction and health pandemics.

In a world just starting to acknowledge the implications, Wheaton College students are at the leading edge of inquiry, thanks to a new BIO 401 Senior Seminar course, “Enter the Anthropocene,” offered last fall.

The discussion-based course created by Associate Professor of Biology Shawn McCafferty was a novel rendering of BIO 401. The seminar—a “capstone” course designed to give soon-to-be graduates the chance to apply knowledge gained in pursuit of their major to a culminating Wheaton experience—is offered annually and is taught on a rotating basis among biology faculty members. Professors come up with their own themes for the seminar.

For the first time, BIO 401 was presented through cross-curricular perspectives from 11 faculty members across divisions. Students spent the semester looking beyond the sciences—to religion, philosophy, anthropology and art, among other disciplines—to consider mankind’s role in causing, and subsequently addressing, environmental issues ranging from global climate change and pollution to the mass extinction of plant and animal species.

McCafferty says he came up with the idea for the collaborative course to meet his students’ broad range of interests and backgrounds, but also to highlight a topic that is garnering increasing attention in academic and policy circles alike.

Human beings already are straining the planet’s resources, and challenges, along with a fair share of soul-searching, are mounting.

Nearly 7 billion people already occupy planet Earth, and that number is still growing. By 2050, the total is expected to surge to 9.6 billion inhabitants, according to the United Nations.A report by the London-based Royal Society, a group of distinguished scientists, says continued population growth and rapid urbanization will be the equivalent of adding one new city of 1 million people every five days between now and 2050. By 2025, there will be about 600 cities spanning the globe with populations of 1 million or more. In 1900, only 16 cities reached that threshold.

When Valerie Gikas ’14, an environmental science major, considers this, she worries about how the crowded planet will survive, given the seemingly insatiable and growing demand for materials and resources and the resulting stress on the environment.

“How do we approach this problem?” she wonders. “Is it more beneficial to start at an individual level or take a political approach? Can it be solved through activism, or through educating young people about the environment?”

It’s not the typical concern of most college students, but it was front and center last fall in a classroom in the Mars Center for Science and Technology, where 21 students tackled some big questions.

“Are we living in the Anthropocene?”

“What evidence have we collected to document our impact on the earth?”

“What are the next steps we can take? What are our options, and do we have moral obligations?”

“What insights do other disciplines offer, from the humanities as well as from science?”

Gikas and her classmates were required to reach far and wide across disciplines to seek answers that could have global implications.

“It’s easier to solve the problem when you get the different perspectives,” she says. “You’re tackling more of it when you come at it that way.”

Biology major Melissa Darnley ’14 agrees: “We’re living in a world now where you can’t stay in your own little niche. You have several other niches, even within science, that you need to come into contact with every day. If you don’t understand where other people are coming from or what their train of thought is, you can’t connect with them and come up with a solution to a problem. There’s a wide range of people on the earth with different opinions and different mindsets. With that comes the need to have everybody on board to make changes.”

For many of the students, the very word—Anthropocene—was an unfamiliar concept.

“I had heard the name floating around, but never really captured it in a concrete way,” says Carolyn Decker ’14, an environmental science major. “We did spend quite a bit of time at the beginning of the seminar asking, ‘What exactly are we talking about here? What does it mean and how does it apply in all of these interdisciplinary ways?’”

Decker and her classmates explored the concept through research papers on varied topics, which they wrote by consulting peer-reviewed scientific research, and then made oral presentations.

Gikas explored the impact of consumerism on the planet in her research; Elizabeth Meyer ’14 (pictured on page 31), a biology major, wrote about how commercial whaling affects marine ecosystems; and environmental science major Rose Harris ’14 considered whether our attempt to replicate nature in our living and office spaces is distancing us from real nature and interest in environmental concerns.

In their papers, students weren’t required to propose solutions to their high-stakes topics, but many did.

For example, in her PowerPoint presentation titled “Amphibians in the Anthropocene: The Effects of Roads on Frogs and Salamanders,” Decker proposed more collaboration among ecologists, urban planners and geographers to protect amphibians.

Up to 95 percent of road mortalities are amphibians—more than other vertebrate animals, according to her findings. “Amphibians are a bellwether for ecosystem health,” she says. “They’re important in a lot of ways. They’re a food source for a lot of people, and they’re one of the main organisms that eat mosquitoes.”

Regardless of their majors and academic backgrounds, students found themselves immersed in challenges that spilled across the educational spectrum. As Stephen Das ’14, a biology major, notes: “It showed us how everything we’re learning can be used to help understand the world around us.”

Students also guided discussions. In addition, they created and hosted a blog based on the coursework and classroom discussions. McCafferty even asked bloggers to submit the title of a song or lyrics to form a “Playlist for the Anthropocene.” Entries included “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” by R.E.M., “Bad Moon Rising” by Creedence Clearwater Revival,” and McCafferty’s own submission, Samuel Barber’s melancholy Adagio for Strings. (“If a video detailing man’s environmental transgressions played in my head, this would be the soundtrack,” he says.)

McCafferty’s approach makes good on calls from the international Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, which says the Anthropocene “demands transdisciplinarity … and (it) challenges established demarcation lines within academia.”

A 2013 report by the center, which works to strengthen the role of the humanities in current political and scientific debates about the environment, shows that a lively debate among international thought leaders is underway about the philosophical, legal, aesthetic, pedagogical and cultural implications of the era at hand. The center, based in Munich, Germany, holds ongoing colloquia, conferences and workshops on the environment.

“Clearly, the idea of humanity’s overwhelming impact on the planet has as much relevance to the ecology-minded as it would for the cellular- and molecular-minded,” McCafferty says. “Not only does the idea of the Anthropocene cover what will arguably be some of the most important issues our students will face as they get older, it is ripe for cross-curricular exploration.

“As scientists, we’re more prepared to think about the ideas and the concepts behind global climate change and ecosystem disruptions,” McCafferty adds. “But we need to go back and ask, ‘How does this come back and impact us as humans?’ This is challenging students to think in different ways. To me, this is what a liberal arts education is all about. It’s going beyond the cold, empirical scientific approach.”

When the professor sent a campus-wide email soliciting speakers for the seminar, the response was so robust that he couldn’t include everybody; 11 guest speakers addressed the class.

One of those answering McCafferty’s call was Assistant Professor of Religion Barbara Darling-Smith, who teaches a course called “Religion and Ecology.”

While faith and science have long experienced a troubled coexistence, the seminar offered an open— and welcoming—floor.

“The most important thing religion brings to the discussion is a sense of hopefulness,” Darling-Smith says, echoing the message she shared with students during her presentation, titled “Can Religion Help Humans Be at Home on This Planet?”

“Religions can provide community and solidarity, which is important in feeling as though one’s own efforts are making a difference,” she says. “Religions also all have some sense of the transcendent, which can inspire our own efforts to work for positive change with regard to the negative effects of human activity on the environment.

M. Gabriela Torres, associate professor of anthropology, in her presentation, “Favelas of Rio de Janeiro: A Discussion on How Inequality Shapes Environments and Cultures,” considered the Anthropocene by looking at the economics of privilege and scarcity in Brazilian slums known as favelas. She focused on how humans react to environmental constraints born of income inequality.

“The students were able to see how cultural practices are not just things that are because they are, but they’re shaped by environments,” Torres says. “They were also able to see that we shape our environments by our cultural practices. It’s not a simple process in which we shape the environment, or the environment shapes us. It goes both ways.”

Torres adds that the liberal arts framing of the Anthropocene makes students very agile thinkers. “If you think about human existence, it doesn’t occur in the neat disciplinary categorizations that we’d like to give them. Humans are extremely complex, and we can’t get a picture of humanity from any one of these disciplines.”

Not everyone is ready to anoint the Anthropocene a new geologic epoch, however.Some in the scientific community point to the lack of stratigraphic evidence, or changes in rock layers, as a lack of definitive proof.

“I can argue it either way,” says geology professor Geoff Collins, a planetary scientist who was one of the featured seminar speakers. “There are some reasons to think that humans may have a large, lasting impact, and there are other reasons to think that much of our impact will be erased very quickly, geologically speaking. An informative thought experiment is to contemplate the question: ‘If dinosaurs had a technological civilization for several centuries, what evidence would be left today, sixty-five million years later?’”

What’s not disputed is that humans will continue to exert influence—for better or for worse—for years to come. There is no shortage of ways to consider such an impact.

And for students like Das, the overriding question to keep asking is: “What kind of planet do we want to leave for the next generation?”

Elliott Mazzola ’09 skydiving over Lodi, Calif., on his 96th jump, and above, on Mont Blanc in Chamonix, France.

Even in the death-defying world of extreme sports, there are few wake-up calls like nearly being swallowed by a glacier.

For Elliott Mazzola ’09, it happened in August 2012, when he and a climbing partner were traversing the more than 100-mile Haute Route, an alpine trail whose 23 ice sheets stretch between Chamonix, France, and Zermatt, Switzerland.

The pair were hiking “off rope,” confident they were safe from the glacier’s hundreds of crevasses—perilous cracks, sometimes hidden by fresh snow, that can plunge unwitting climbers more than a hundred feet into nothingness.

That’s when the ground gave way under Mazzola.

“My foot went all the way through and all I saw was this void beneath me. It was a really dumb mistake on our part, and luckily nothing came of it,” he recalls, noting that alpinists are supposed to scan the terrain hundreds of feet around them for gaps not covered by snow, evidence that a crevasse is near. “You kind of laugh it off, but it could have been the end.”

For Mazzola, the near miss was hardly enough to keep him from coming back. Living on the edge of fear can be “meditative,” he says from Chamonix, which acclaimed mountaineer and writer Mark Twight calls “the death-sport capital of the world.”

Mazzola resists notions he’s courting danger, but neither is he shrinking from new opportunities and possibilities—a message formed in no small part during his days at Wheaton. The liberal arts have been described as a voyage of self-discovery, and it’s up to each individual to get the most out of life and see the world in a unique way, Mazzola says.

“Wheaton was a highly transformative period of my life,” he says. “A liberal arts education is a great way to experiment with different interests and try new things.

“We are what we repeatedly do,” Mazzola adds. “If you want to be a photographer, take lots of photos. If you want to be a BASE jumper, go get lots of skydives. It’s a simple concept, but it’s not often easy. But I think that with self-discipline, sacrifice and the occasional stroke of good luck, I can realize all my dreams, and most other people could, too.”

For Mazzola, the dream starts in Chamonix. It’s no ordinary slice of paradise.

Elliott Mazzola on the Haute Route, an eight-day Alpine expedition from Zermatt to Chamonix

The region, in Europe’s southern Alps, draws types ranging from extreme skiers who hurl themselves down 60-degree slopes, to “wing suit” flyers, who jump off cliffs wearing “bat wing” sleeves and a parachute.

Mazzola has been fascinated with the area since he visited his grandparents in Europe when he was 14: “The landscapes are spectacular. It’s like no other place I’ve ever been.”

The Haute Route is only one stamp on his extreme passport. In 2010, he spent 30 days mountaineering in South America’s Patagonia, where bad weather made every step “agony.” Last summer, he competed in the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, a mountain “ultra-marathon” through France, Italy and Switzerland. In true Mazzola fashion, he decided at the last minute to compete in the 100-mile event.

“I didn’t even register for the race,” he says. “I was giddy and running too fast down hills and things like that. It was a big challenge, but I did finish.”

Mazzola is now working to log 150 to 200 skydives—he’s tallied 63, at last count—before he tries his first BASE jump, in which extreme athletes jump, with a parachute, from Buildings, Antennae, Spans (bridges) and Earth (cliffs).

Experts advise that number of skydives before BASE jumping, “basically to minimize your risk of dying,” Mazzola says. “I’d like to have a solid foundation and progress slowly so I can continue to enjoy these passions.”

He leads a vagabond life, hitchhiking to new extreme feats around Europe. He subsidizes his adventures through odd jobs and doing sales and acquisitions—on his computer—for Beverly Hills, Calif.-based House of Film, a distributor of independent movies.

The thrill seeker running in the mountains of Chamonix, France

He is philosophical in the face of danger, perhaps a given since he was a philosophy major at Wheaton.

“Fear is a good thing to keep you in check,” he says, “it keeps me alive. But it’s overcoming fear that lets me live.”

One of his former Wheaton mentors, Associate Professor of Philosophy John Partridge, is similarly ruminative about Mazzola’s exploits.

“Socrates said that practicing philosophy is preparing for death,” Partridge says. “One might say that Eli is the most promising philosopher Wheaton has ever produced.”

That the Keene, N.H., native has turned to a life of derring-do may come as a surprise to many. Mazzola lived a decidedly staid childhood by comparison. He didn’t take his first camping trip until high school, and it didn’t inspire confidence.

“We forgot matches, it was raining, and we had no fire,” Mazzola says. “It wasn’t your ideal camping experience.”

But it gave him enough of a taste to want to give the great outdoors another try. He dreamed of traipsing across Canada or wandering the Appalachian Trail after high school, but the idea of delaying his higher education to his mid- to late 20s held no appeal.

Mazzola applied to several colleges, looking for a picturesque campus with strong academics. He also wanted to be part of a tightly knit community—“nothing too big.” Wheaton fit the bill. He was admitted, but deferred enrollment so he could take a gap year.

Mazzola set out for one more adventure before diving into coursework. He took a job with Czelusniak et Dugal, Inc., a Northampton-based organ builder, for whom he roamed New England building and restoring pipe organs. Mazzola grew up playing the instrument at church.

“It was cool, but the whole schedule got to me,” he says. “I realized I could never do another 9-to-5 job.”

He chose to enroll at Wheaton because he loved the idea of having a “quintessential New England liberal arts experience.” The college also would allow him to work closely with professors and meet peers from diverse backgrounds.

But that wasn’t all. Wheaton was a portal to the world. As a junior, he studied in Jordan through the SIT Graduate Institute. While in the Middle East, he visited the West Bank and made a documentary of the Arab-Israeli conflict from a Palestinian perspective.

Despite his range of experiences, he was unclear on a major when he arrived in Norton. Then, his sophomore year, he took an ancient philosophy course taught by Partridge.

“There was a great debate about the Greek term eudaimonia, essentially meaning ‘the good life,’ and how that was achieved,” Mazzola says. “According to Aristotle, humans achieve this through excellence in our highest capacity: reason. That resonated with me, and I always joke that I have to rationalize my life every day as a semi-professional ski bum.”

He was further influenced by Partridge’s ancient Greek philosophy class, which required students to complete writing assignments “to express our own ideas and formulate them in ways that made sense,” Mazzola says. “I realized there was a philosopher inside me.”

“Eli could do the rigorous analysis we teach our philosophy students to do, but he was also a synthetic philosopher,” adds Partridge. “He made connections, sometimes surprising connections, between the things he studied and his own experience. Eli’s final paper sought to move from Aristotle’s metaphysics to questions about the meaning of life.”

Beyond the books, Mazzola found meaning in movement. With energy to burn, he competed on Wheaton’s rugby team all four years, earning the nickname “Crazy Legs” for his madcap dashes on the pitch. At a lithe 5 feet, 11 inches, and 160 pounds, Mazzola says he was forced to run “in all kinds of crazy diagonals to avoid contact.”

He also went running for hours at a time, recalls August Avantaggio ’09, who first met Mazzola when the two were paired as freshman roommates at Young Hall.

“He was always running. You could never wear him out,” says Avantaggio, of Damariscotta, Maine, who remained Mazzola’s roommate throughout college.

His pursuits didn’t stop with the athletic. Mazzola would play middle-of-the-night Bach toccatas at Cole Memorial Chapel, once drawing the attention of public safety officers, who came to investigate the sound of pipes piercing the night.

“People knew that if the organ was playing at midnight, it was Elliott,” Avantaggio says with a laugh. Adds Mazzola: “I had access to the church back home, and I often played the organ in the middle of the night when no one was around. It was more of a convenience to go then, but it is kind of eerie when you’ve only got the one light from the organ and you’re shaking the whole building.”

Few defined iconoclast like Mazzola.

“He was not a person to take the simple route,” Avantaggio says. “He was always off doing something; he’d never sit still. He did his classwork, but he would always want to take advantage of his free time and go off and forge his own path.”

He had one other notable passion during his Wheaton days: Mazzola loved to explore abandoned buildings, particularly in Boston’s Back Bay. He once asked Avantaggio if he wanted to tour the abandoned and dilapidated Metropolitan State Hospital in the woods of Waltham, Mass., but the skittish roommate demurred.

Mazzola typically took a video camera on such trips, an interest he cultivated as a young boy. He’d make his own short films with the footage. Mazzola even collaborated with Wheaton playwright-in-residence Charlotte Meehan on three of her multimedia plays, creating material for each production. (Sweet Disaster, was staged in Providence, R.I.; Looking for George and 27 Tips for Banishing the Blues were performed in New York.)

“He’s just brilliant, utterly brilliant,” Meehan says. “Eli sort of came to Wheaton ready-made, and he left the college understanding that he wants to experience life and it’s OK for him to do that without climbing some ladder that’s invisible. It doesn’t surprise me at all that Eli would do extreme sports because he’s so good at everything.”

Mazzola had more than an inkling he’d return to France once he got his degree. “As soon as I didn’t have anything better going on in my life, I decided, that would be the time to buy a ticket,” he says.

He figured he’d spend a ski season in Chamonix before returning home. That was more than three years ago. Chamonix cast its spell on Mazzola the same way it has on thousands of other outdoor enthusiasts. The first Winter Olympics were held there in 1924. Mazzola’s memories of skiing the area when he was a senior at Wheaton are vivid.

“When you’re high in the mountains, you feel humbled by the beauty and grandeur that surround you,” Mazzola says.

Towering 15,781 feet above sea level, the fabled Mont Blanc looms over the Chamonix valley floor near the borders of France, Switzerland and Italy. Clearly, these aren’t the White Mountains. It didn’t take long for Mazzola to feel part of the milieu, as extreme skiers and other daredevils readily mingle with admirers.

“For me, it always seemed like a pipe dream to participate, but when you finally realize these are normal people, it becomes a more realistic dream to have,” Mazzola says.

Still, the dangers are real. In Chamonix, there’s a fine line between adventure and foolhardiness. More people die on Mont Blanc—up to 100 a year—than on any mountain in Europe, data show. Causes include avalanches, exposure and falling.

None of it is lost on Mazzola, who is drawn to high altitudes for many reasons, but this one in particular: “You get a sense of peace and quiet in the mountains that’s hard to find these days.

“I think I’m naïve in a lot of ways, which is why I like to find climbing partners who are more cautious and conservative in their decisions,” he adds, “someone to temper my eagerness and enthusiasm. Sometimes you think you’re doing something that’s just fine, and it’s not.”

Climbing mountains is only one part of the journey. Getting down is another, and what better way than to run down the face? To casual observers, the humorous sight of runners with their flailing windmill arms belies the real danger.

“You have to be hyperfocused on the rocky trail in front of you,” Mazzola says. “It’s quite chaotic, and you’re a bit out of control. It’s one foot in front of the other, hoping you don’t fall. Every time, I have a close call.”

“I’ll do an expedition that crosses 23 glaciers over a hundred miles in the high mountains in the middle of the wilderness, but then I come home to visit, and I’ll kayak on the Ashuelot River, which is an incredibly tame, flat river, my dad starts to worry,” Elliott Mazzola says. “It’s ridiculous.”

Frank Mazzola’s nerves are calmed by his son’s circumspection on his more dangerous adventures.

“Even though it’s a dangerous path for people who aren’t careful, Elliott doesn’t take unnecessary risks,” he says. “He knows his limits.”

Adds Elliott: “We’re all going to die at some point. I don’t want to die on the mountains, I try not to, but I don’t let that notion of death keep me from these precious moments of life.”

Spoken like a true rationalist.

Andrew Faught is a California-based freelance writer.

]]>http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/02/07/view-thrill/feed/0Elliott-Mazzola-skydiving4Skydiving over Lodi, Calif., on his 96th jumpMazzola_DSC_0335Elliott Mazzola on the Haute Route, an eight-day Alpine expedition from Zermatt to ChamonixElliot-Mazzola2The thrill seeker running in the mountains of Chamonix, FranceSwinging for the fenceshttp://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2013/06/12/swinging-fences/
http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2013/06/12/swinging-fences/#respondThu, 13 Jun 2013 03:45:40 +0000http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/?p=8270Kenneth Babby ’02 aims to score big as new owner of Akron baseball team

There’s no professional sports team owner in the United States like Kenneth Babby ’02. His birth certificate attests to that. At 33, the new head of the Akron Aeros Double-A baseball club is the youngest team owner in the country.

In a game that loves numbers, Babby doesn’t dwell on this distinction from this northeast Ohio city known as the “rubber capital of the world.” His marathon work days—he’ll arrive at downtown’s Canal Park by 8 a.m. and sometimes not leave until midnight—are consumed by altogether different metrics.

Such as the 68-foot-wide video board he recently installed beyond the left-center-field fence. Or the 20-scoop ice cream colossus known as “The Screamer,” which debuted at the Aeros’ season opener in April. The confection is even served in an authentic batting helmet that fans can take home.

This is baseball, Babby style.

“For me, it’s more about what happens outside the lines,” says Babby, a computer science and economics major at Wheaton. “I’ve always had this obsession with the fan experience, from the moment they get out of the car to the moment they decide where to sit.”

That obsession—and dreams of owning his own team—dates back to his days as a kid doing homework in the warehouse at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, home to Major League Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles. His father, Lon Babby, was the team’s general counsel from 1979 to 1994, during which time the younger Babby’s love affair with the game began. Day after day, he watched the Oriole faithful descend on the stadium to root for their team. Nothing got to the city’s soul better.

“There’s something magical about these places,” says Babby, who was raised in Bethesda, Md. “You’re really walking into the epicenter of a community.”

Community is a common refrain in Babby’s life, and it’s an ethos he experienced in no small measure at Wheaton. He calls the college a “small but mighty community” that values personal connections. He enrolled at Wheaton not only for its beautiful campus, but also because “people talked to you and took you in.” As a student, Babby wasted little time joining the fold.

He was class president his sophomore year, and as Student Government Association (SGA) treasurer during his junior and senior years, he helped manage a $300,000 SGA budget. And so began the budding career of a businessman and community booster.

Babby continues to play critical roles at the college. He is a member of the Board of Trustees and he sits on the Go Beyond: Campaign for Wheaton steering committee. He says raising funds for the college is vital to ensuring that future generations of Wheaton students can have the same transformative learning and character-building experiences that he did.

“Ultimately, at the end of the day, Wheaton has made me who I am,” Babby says. “I arrived on that campus as a teenager not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, and Wheaton helped build in me a love of community, of philanthropy and giving back.”

These days, Babby harks back to lessons learned at the college to reinvigorate an Aeros team that has lost its entertainment cachet in recent years.

“My very early strategic lessons were taught right there in Knapton Hall at Wheaton,” Babby says, citing economics professor John Gildea’s lectures on supply and demand and strategic corporate finance skills. “Wheaton taught me how to think and how to solve things strategically. To an outsider, we’re selling hot dogs, tickets and advertising. But in terms of a price strategy, marketing and trying to fill a 9,000-seat ballpark 71 nights a year, it’s hard work.”

That’s particularly been the case in recent years. Between 2004 and 2010, Aeros annual attendance plunged 40 percent—to just over 260,000. It was a bitter pill for a team that previously led all 30 Double-A franchises in attendance (the Aeros also were the first team at the Double-A level to draw a half million fans).

But, with only weeks before opening day in April, Babby wasn’t dwelling on the past; there was too much work to be done. The Aeros’ mascot, Orbit the Space Cat, has made 70 public appearances and counting since Babby assumed ownership last October. The new owner is similarly ubiquitous, speaking to service groups, organizations and anyone in Akron who, like Babby, sees magic in baseball.

“This is a rededication to the fan experience,” says Babby. “To be a successful business, you have to be a giving and caring corporate and community citizen, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

Babby brings an impressive pedigree (he earned an M.B.A. from Johns Hopkins University in 2007) and an enthusiasm that should bode well for Aeros fans, according to those who know him. After graduating from Wheaton, he landed a position in the information technology department at the Washington Post. It wasn’t his first exposure to the paper; he completed an IT internship at the Post in the summer after his sophomore year. His rise within the company ranks was unprecedented. When he resigned in March 2012, Babby was the newspaper’s chief revenue officer and general manager for digital operations, and the youngest senior officer in the history of the Post.

As a new owner, Kenneth Babby ’02 is ready for the challenges coming his way.

He oversaw the development of the newspaper’s mobile, video and email outreach, innovations that in 2011 generated record traffic to the Post’s digital properties. In a memo to staff announcing Babby’s resignation, President and General Manager Steve Hills lauded him for “tremendous energy as well as innovative ideas, a results-focused orientation, and humility.”

It’s those traits he’s expected to draw from in making the Aeros a regional draw once again.

Boston Red Sox President and CEO Larry Lucchino, who has known the Babby family since he worked with Lon Babby in Baltimore, urged Ken—much to the young man’s chagrin—to forge a path, at least initially, away from baseball. It was at the Post that Babby learned marketing skills that Lucchino says will translate well to baseball.

“He made a good decision years ago to develop his own body of work rather than jump too soon into the sports world,” Lucchino says. “There are a lot of people who love sports, but what’s important is you bring a skill, a talent, a body of experience to the table so that you can do the job. Ken went out on his own and developed those skills and his own reputation. I give him great credit for that.

“If I could buy stock in the Akron Aeros, I would, because of the faith I have in Ken and his energy, drive and passion,” adds Lucchino.

Wheaton classmate and friend Nathaniel “Nash” Oven ’02 recalls joining Babby at an Aeros game in June 2012, before he bought the team. Oven and his wife, Amy, didn’t spend so much time watching the game as they did switching seats to consider sight lines and to study fans.

“We sat in 10 or 15 different sections of the stadium,” recalls Oven, assistant track and field coach at Robert Morris University in Pennsylvania. “Ken was talking his plan and we were giving our ideas about what we’d like to see a ballpark be. For someone who’s been around sports all his life, he wanted the fan’s perspective.”

Are the bleachers comfortable? Is there enough shade? How are the concessions?

Approaching a year later, Babby is still inquiring.

“There’s something to be said for going in with your eyes wide open and thinking differently about how to do things,” he says. “For me, that’s been very much the process here: hiring great people, asking great questions, and making mistakes and trying to learn from them. I’ve always tried to keep that intern mentality that I learned in my Wheaton days, and it’s a huge part of my early success here in Akron.”

Says Oven: “He wants you to come to the ballpark and be a kid while you’re there for three hours, to really enjoy the game of baseball and all that happens with it, from the smell of the ballpark food to how you watch the replays on the scoreboard, to making sure you’re comfortable in your seat. He thinks about the overall product; it’s not just the endgame. That’s what makes him such a great businessperson.”

Kenneth Babby ’02 has some fun on the baseball field with the Aeros mascot, Orbit the Space Cat.

Babby grew up aspiring to play professional ball, and he even considered trying out for catcher on the Wheaton squad. But despite strong defensive skills, he had a mediocre arm and couldn’t hit a breaking ball.

“It was a blessing and I didn’t even realize it,” Babby says. “In the end, it was more appropriate for me to be studying.”

He approached academics in earnest. But it didn’t always come easy. “Ken was a good student, but he had to work at it,” says Gildea. “He had to work at a lot of things he did in life.”

That drive is exactly what makes Babby suited for the work ahead, Gildea adds.

Over the next two years, Babby is committed to making $3.5 million in privately financed improvements to Canal Park. The video board is the crowning touch, the largest of its kind at the Double-A level, and equal in size to the board at Boston’s Fenway Park. Babby says the board won’t be limited to baseball; on Sundays, Akronites will be invited to gather on the outfield turf to watch a movie. He’s also planning to build a restaurant in the right-field concourse.

Don’t look for Babby to cloister himself in the owner’s box. He plans to attend games with his 4-year-old son, Josh, who lives in Maryland with Babby’s former wife, Jill Barents Babby ’02. “You’ll probably find me in the bleachers,” he says, his enthusiasm unrestrained. “Where else would anybody want to spend their time? It’s northeast Ohio in the summertime. It’s gorgeous.”

Babby’s boosterism hasn’t gone unnoticed by Akron’s powers that be. Akron Mayor Donald Plusquellic says he immediately was struck by Babby’s geniality and readiness to dive into life in his adopted city. Babby signed a 30-year stadium lease, in addition to inking a four-year player development extension with the Indians.

“We embraced him right at the beginning. I felt early on that I could trust him, and he proved that out. It was a relatively easy negotiation,” Plusquellic says. “Ken brings this great enthusiasm and a great amount of personal exuberance and energy that we really needed.”

Babby can expect challenges. Unlike most businesses, minor league baseball team owners don’t control the product on the field. Players come and go at the discretion of big league clubs, so marketing the team around star athletes isn’t part of the prospectus. Successful team ownership at this level relies on more than just home runs and the chance to watch soon-to-be-famous prospects.

“You have to provide the fun and the activities and the things that make minor league baseball what it is,” Plusquellic says. “You might be watching a person running around the bases in a ketchup uniform. There are so many things that make it a fun, family-oriented activity center.”

Gildea knows his old charge will be equal to the task.

“This is absolutely the perfect job for Ken,” says Gildea, a self-professed Indians nut who plans to travel to Akron this summer to see his protégé and take in a game. “He has the big picture of what fans want to see, plus he has such great interpersonal skills. He’s going to be one of these owners who knows all of his employees on a first-name basis. He’s going to bring a love and compassion to the game and community that I think the people of Akron are really going to appreciate.”

Babby doesn’t take his role for granted.

“This is a very flattering position that I’m in,” he says. “I’m humbled every day by how much I’ve learned.”

For baseball’s youngest owner, the to-do list’s last order of business is short and to the point: Play ball!

As Superstorm Sandy chased tens of thousands of New Yorkers from Lower Manhattan in October, Joseph Lee ’08 played a role in an altogether different human drama less than two miles from surging floodwaters.

At the Midtown offices of Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York (RMA), where Lee is research project manager, live incubated embryos awaiting uterine implantation suddenly were at risk when much of the island lost power. So were the childbearing hopes of as many as 10 women scheduled for fertility treatments that had to be performed within a 48-hour window. In the end, the power held, even as stress levels spiked.

“There was a lot of confusion and nerves were high. The phones were ringing off the hook,” says Lee, who was unable to return to his Queens home because of the storm. “We tried to answer everyone’s questions, and we were on 24/7 alert to make sure everything was OK.”

There was good reason for vigilance. Sixty blocks south, NYU Fertility Center not only lost power, but its basement flooded and generators failed, forcing frenzied staff to safeguard embryos in liquid nitrogen. No embryos were lost at either center, and RMA of New York was able to provide transportation and lodging to patients with scheduled appointments.

Bowing to the storm was never an option for Lee, a biology major who graduated cum laude from Wheaton. Resiliency and perseverance are traits he’s embodied since growing up in blue-collar Lewiston, Maine, where he lacked a father figure but found fulfillment marveling over the human condition, albeit through a scientific lens. A high school science class viewing of the 1997 film “Gattaca,” which considered the role of genetics on in vitro fertilization technology, particularly stoked his scientific ardor.

“I’ve always been intrigued by how humans work from a cellular basis,” Lee says. “We’re the most complex machines in the world, and trying to understand our mechanics is fascinating to me.”

He landed at RMA of New York in 2011, after spending two years as a research assistant at Boston Children’s Hospital, within Harvard Medical School’s stem cell research program. There he studied cancer biology in zebrafish. In 2007, Lee was a research intern at the Medical College of Georgia, where he worked in the vascular biology department.

Lee opted against enrolling in medical school and instead applied for the fertility center job because he felt he could have a more immediate impact on patients. “I wanted to get involved with what is called translational research, which goes right to the bedside of the patient,” he says. “I had a real hunger for this. We’re seeing how families are created, and it’s exciting to be a part of that. I’m a big family person, and being in a research field like this enhances that.”

Lee was to the point when he applied for the job. At 25, there was nothing to lose.

“I basically said to them, ‘I know I probably have the least amount of experience among applicants, but I’ll work for a low salary. Give me a chance and we’ll see what happens,’” he recalls. “They liked that. It’s a rarity to find someone who can be very vocal and confident within the science field, and be able to connect with people quickly. They gave me a chance and it’s worked out.”

Lee’s approach resonated with Dr. Alan Copperman, the clinic’s CEO and vice chairman of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science at Mount Sinai Medical Center. Lee has turned out to be a “key component in our scientific mission,” he says.

“It’s important that we continue to be inquisitive, that we innovate, that we critically analyze our own data and data from peer-reviewed journals, and that we effectively partner with industry and academia,” Copperman says.

“I like how Joe is not afraid to learn,” he adds. “And he can even sing and dance.” (Lee was hired shortly before the company’s holiday party.)

RMA is one of the nation’s largest in vitro fertilization centers. As part of its research team, Lee is working to develop a technique that will allow doctors to implant not just the best embryo, but a genetically “perfect” embryo, with the strongest odds of being carried to full term. Implanting a single embryo also cuts down on potential health risks to the mother inherent to multiple births.

Researchers around the country are racing to reach the same goal, a hypercompetitive contest punctuated by hope and frustration alike. Reasons for infertility vary, making a magic solution elusive.

In vitro research has exploded in the past five years, as researchers unravel the human genome, Lee says. Researchers are all on the hunt for telltale biomarkers—proteins and genes—that could tip off an embryo’s viability.

“Clinical research is the most exciting and most dreadful thing to be part of, exciting because of the possibility of finding something that can be advantageous to people,” Lee says. “But it’s frustrating when you work on a project for months and months and nothing comes out of it. That’s always a letdown. You have to try not to get distracted by that and go from there.”

“That’s very important in research,” Tong says. “If you’re stubborn and have a one-track mind, you might expect your results and discard the outcomes. If you accept different outcomes, you might make the best out of accidental discoveries.”

Lee calls Tong a father figure, someone who “would stay late and go over and over a concept until you understood it. He really respected people who showed ambition, and he listened and really cared about his students. He took me under his wing starting my freshman year.” Lee’s favorite classes at the college included anatomy, physiology and alternative medicine, all taught by Tong, who retired last June.

Tong’s first impressions of his budding protégé were distinct: “I thought he was from California. He looked like a valley boy, and he had this very relaxed, low-key demeanor.” Lee’s fashion sensibilities veer to the preppy, a look he’s cultivated with academic-like zeal.

“It’s New England prep with a twist of modern Englishman,” Lee says. “It’s very much a prep style, but a little more formfitting. The pants are narrow, the ties are narrow.” (Until recently, he maintained a men’s fashion blog at Preplee.com.)

There is a bit of California influence to Lee’s character. He’s surfed since he was 10, learning the sport with his cousin in, of all places, the mild waters of Old Orchard Beach, Maine. He’s since surfed six- to 10-foot waves in locales as varied as Australia’s east coast, and even in Peru (“the best surfing I ever had”), where he took part in a surf “voluntourism” program called WAVES for Development International. The nonprofit effort teams surfers with impoverished Peruvian youths, teaching them the sport while engaging them in community service and educational opportunities.

Lee’s assertiveness was hard to ignore that first year at Wheaton. He wanted to do lab work as a freshman so badly that he wouldn’t heed Tong’s suggestion that he wait a semester for a space to open.

“I said, ‘You know what? I’ll just show up and work alongside people and learn,’” Lee says with a chuckle. “Once you’re there, sometimes they’re stuck with you.”

Says Tong: “I finally decided he is aggressive in getting what he wants in a very subtle, relaxed way.” Tong’s teaching style worked well with Lee’s work habits. “I trust students,” Tong says. “Once they’ve learned the basic concepts and methods, then they’re on their own and can take their own approach.”

Lee’s research focused on angiogenesis in zebrafish—or the development of blood vessels from preexisting blood vessels. Although the research doesn’t have a direct bearing on his current fertility research, Lee credits Tong’s lab with giving him critical research instincts.

“If you don’t have experience going into the scientific world, things can be very confusing and people typically won’t hold your hand,” Lee says. “Wheaton gave me the skills to interact clearly and confidently with other researchers and scientists.

“The college also challenged me to engage with people who maybe don’t have the same mind-set, which is instrumental once you leave Wheaton,” he adds. “You’re not just going to work with people in science. The college geared me to be ambitious, and made me strive to be better. It made me focus on my goals, and it definitely matured me very quickly. When you talk to people who went to large universities, they don’t get it the way we get it.”

Recruited by several New England colleges to play basketball, he opted instead to bank his future on Norton because he liked the Wheaton ethos after visiting the campus, “and I heard the science program was good, so I just went for it.” But there was one problem. The basketball team wasn’t looking for a 5-foot-10-inch shooting guard.

“I talked to the coaches and they said I’d have to walk on,” Lee says. Not only did he make the varsity squad as a freshman, but he found a way to offset his height disadvantage. Lee took his game to the perimeter, proving to be one of the Lyons’ leading three-point throwers during his freshman year.

But academic rigors and his devotion to scientific research pushed basketball to the sidelines. (“I actually did away with talking to former teammates for the most part, and I didn’t go to games. It was a big part of my identity, so it was tough to give it up.”) Lee did, however, keep his shooting form by competing in intramural basketball.

The lab became his new proving ground. Lee and friend Kyle Judkins ’08, also a biology major from Maine, spent long hours in Tong’s lab, working on angiogenesis research. The pair used computer software to map blood flow in zebrafish, an effort that could lead to better care for a number of diseases. Their research was published in the Zebrafish scientific journal.

The relationship was competitive but healthy, says Judkins. The pair met at a new-student gathering at the Kennebunkport, Maine, home of a Wheaton alumna. Lee was dressed with his typical style sensibilities.

“He was wearing two polos, one on top of the other with both of the collars popped up,” Judkins says. “I think one of them was pink and the other was yellow. We made fun of him for four years straight. He dresses so well I actually thought he was an upperclassman when I first met him.”

The classmates roomed together in McIntire Hall their freshman year. They resolved to push the boundaries of academic and athletic growth, working out together and spending hours talking science. Outside the classroom, Lee took part in Wheaton-organized Habitat for Humanity projects in Florida and the Virgin Islands.

“Some people may see Joe as being cocky,” says Judkins, now a second-year student at the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine in Blacksburg, Va. “He’s just very, very sure of himself and that carries him further than most people would go. He’s not afraid to dip his toe into the cold waters. I think you might see his name pop up in the research world some day, or as a leader in general.”

Lee says it’s impossible to overstate the college’s influence, from small class sizes and a diverse student body, to its emphasis on writing, and non-major-related courses such as art history, which he credits for giving him a broader perspective on the world. “Every course I took at Wheaton formulated who I am now. They were tough, but I’m glad they were tough. Now that I’m out there, I can see the advantage. Wheaton opened up many doors on my view of the world.

“I always had the feeling at Wheaton that there was a great community supporting me and pushing me to be the best person I could be.”